But if the fatal principle should come to be introduced, that, under pretence of organisation, regulation, protection, or encouragement, the law may take from one party in order to give to another, help itself to the wealth acquired by all the classes that it may increase that of one class, whether that of the agriculturists, the manufacturers, the shipowners, or artists and comedians; then certainly, in this case, there is no class which may not pretend, and with reason, to place its hand upon the law, which would not demand with fury its right of election and eligibility, and which would overturn society rather than not obtain it.  Even beggars and vagabonds will prove to you that they have an incontestable title to it.  They will say—­“We never buy wine, tobacco, or salt, without paying the tax, and a part of this tax is given by law in perquisites and gratuities to men who are richer than we are.  Others make use of the law to create an artificial rise in the price of bread, meat, iron, or cloth.  Since everybody traffics in law for his own profit, we should like to do the same.  We should like to make it produce the right to assistance, which is the poor man’s plunder.  To effect this, we ought to be electors and legislators, that we may organise, on a large scale, alms for our own class, as you have organised, on a large scale, protection for yours.  Don’t tell us that you will take our cause upon yourselves, and throw to us 600,000 francs to keep us quiet, like giving us a bone to pick.  We have other claims, and, at any rate, we wish to stipulate for ourselves, as other classes have stipulated for themselves!” How is this argument to be answered?  Yes, as long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true mission, that it may violate property instead of securing it, everybody will be wanting to manufacture law, either to defend himself against plunder, or to organise it for his own profit.  The political question will always be prejudicial, predominant, and absorbing; in a word, there will be fighting around the door of the Legislative Palace.  The struggle will be no less furious within it.  To be convinced of this, it is hardly necessary to look at what passes in the Chambers in France and in England; it is enough to know how the question stands.

Is there any need to prove that this odious perversion of law is a perpetual source of hatred and discord,—­that it even tends to social disorganisation?  Look at the United States.  There is no country in the world where the law is kept more within its proper domain—­which is, to secure to every one his liberty and his property.  Therefore, there is no country in the world where social order appears to rest upon a more solid basis.  Nevertheless, even in the United States, there are two questions, and only two, which from the beginning have endangered political order.  And what are these two questions?  That of slavery and that of tariffs; that is, precisely